1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to signs with motive capabilities.
2. Prior Art
Signs are ubiquitous throughout civilization. In order to be effective, signs must attract the attention of the target audience. As such, inventors have come up with methods to make their devices stand out. U.S. Pat. No. 1,600,998 to Russell (1926) describes an advertising display which mimics human arm movement through electromechanical means. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,081 (1988) Andrae and Seiberlich developed a sign consisting of a human face with a mouth capable of changing position. Thigpen, in his U.S. Pat. No. 4,656,768 (1987), also used a movement approach by describing a sign with simulated human arms which rotated due to impact from wind. All of these devices are meant for fixed installation, and their visual appearance is not easily changeable.
In his U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,424 (1994), Hegemann used electronic flashing lights on a sign to attract attention. While this device had the possibility of being portable, the strobe action of the lights had limited application due to brightness of the surrounding ambient and the desired tone of the product or action to be advertised.
Bobblehead dolls are three-dimensional sculptures which feature a head and body crafted to resemble a person, animal or character. The sculpted head component is usually larger in scale than the body it is attached to. The head is also connected to the body through a non-rigid means, such that the head moves in short and seemingly unpredictable directions. Both the relative size of the skull and spasmodic motion combine to create a comic effect. Modern incarnations of bobblehead dolls began in the 1950s, and often utilized the likenesses of athletes and celebrities.
Although these dolls continue to be popular promotional and collectors items, they have properties that limit their deployment. Namely, bobblehead dolls are small in size and expensive to manufacture. Current bobblehead dolls range from 3 to 12 inches in height. Larger sizes would render them too heavy or unwieldy. Also, due to the three-dimensional shape, artists must sculpt and design customized injection molds or dies in order to mass produce a particular figure.
In Yarnall's U.S. Pat. No. 6,810,611 (2004) and Lui's U.S. Pat. No. 6,511,359 (2003), both inventors attempted to improve the ease of customization by adding the ability to insert photographs into the head-shape of the bobblehead figurines. However, these devices remained small, and the three-dimensional body shapes were fixed.
A scene from the Warner Brothers motion picture “Blazing Saddles” (1974) depicted life-sized photographic cutouts of local townspeople characters. The photographs of the heads were proportionately sized to the respective bodies, and both the head and body portions lay in the same geometrical plane. Movement of the head was limited to a side to side swaying motion. Such devices were meant to accurately simulate the appearance of human beings in both size and shape. Said cutouts were also fixed to the ground and aesthetically viewable only from one side. That is, the back side of the cutout figure did not look the same as the front side.